Paranoidangel's Blog

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I wrote some stuff over the summer. Or to be more accurately, right at the end of summer when the deadlines were suddenly looming.

for unconventionalcourtship I wrote:Night of the Undead Science Project (1809 words) by paranoidangel
Fandom: Blake's 7
Relationships: Dayna Mellanby/Del Tarrant
Summary: Dayna Mellanby and Del Tarrant's evening turns deadly when some uninvited guests show up at a party - a horde of hungry zombies. The pair is in a fight for their lives when a new, heroic side of Dayna emerges, and she vows to protect Tarrant no matter the cost....

Danya/Tarrant is also usually upbeat, with the two joking with and insulting each other. It may involve an action-adventure plot, or some other excuse for Dayna to make something explode.

Which perfectly describes everything I like about the pairing.

I struggled with what to write for this, despite the summary being perfect. I'm not a fan of zombies, but I couldn't think of an alternative, except maybe for rebels, who don't know who Tarrant and Dayna are. But then Big Finish did that. And then I realised that zombies could be blown up, they stayed.

Originally the second sentence said: a new, heroic side of Dayna emerges. But I just couldn't manage that level of crack. And then I realised I can swap the names, and the fic practically wrote itself after that.

For remixrevival I was assigned to someone who'd written a lot of canons I know, and has a completely different style to me, so I was spoilt for choice. I thought I wasn't going to be able to choose but then I'd read a Harry Potter fic and the next day it occurred to me that maybe Remus's reaction to Sirius announcing he's gay could be different, and therefore change the immediate aftermath.

I am sorting out avoiding Star Trek Discovery spoilers at the moment. This is because it's only on Netflix and I plan to only have Netflix for the one free month. So I need to start late in order to get all the episodes into one month. I am only having Netflix for one month because I don't like Netflix because:

It refuses to tell you what's on there until you sign up - what if you signed up and then found there was nothing you wanted to watch? You've then wasted your free month.

Everyone has it.

I've also got annoyed with the amount of Discovery stuff I've been seeing on Twitter and RSS, not that I've been reading it. It makes me feel like everyone is going to watch it, which makes me not want to.

I had the same thing earlier with Strictly, when I saw a stat for how many people watched it two weeks ago. I made me feel like if all those people were watching it, I don't want to be one of them.

It's one of the reasons why I can't stand Converse shoes and you couldn't pay me to wear them. I dislike the way they look anyway, and I wouldn't wear branded clothes or shoes (except DMs if they were cheaper and I wore skirts). But everyone wearing them just makes them that little bit worse.

It's not everything. I wear jeans, I watch Doctor Who, I love Wimbledon. I don't know what the difference is. It's not just coming late to the party - I read A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and only after that did it seem like everyone was reading/had read it. At which point I wished I hadn't, even though I liked it. It's very irrational. But at least it gives me plenty of thing to try for I've Never Seen Star Wars.

September seems to be shit month at work at the moment. It's just all been going down at once and involving everything going wrong, leaving late and working at weekends. Yesterday I worked from 9am to 3pm with just a short break for lunch and draping the washing.

I did then use Facetime for the first time yesterday. It turns out to be a bit crap and Skype is better.

Missy is definitely an old lady (she's two next month): she's like herself, only more so. Also, when hamsters get old they drink more and therefore wee more (hamster wee smells, but the poo doesn't). This is definitely currently true of Missy. The worst thing is her tendency to wee where her food store is, so I keep throwing away wet food.

She did turn actually use her brain the other day. A couple of weeks ago when I was cleaning her out, she pouched her food store and left it in her secret food store under my desk drawers that she doesn't think I know about. After I threw away some wet food and she didn't have much left, she went and fetched some from under my desk and put it in her cage.

Aside from attempting (and failing) to keep up with the week's TV and podcasts, I've also been writing. I'm not doing any other ficathons this year aside from Yuletide, so I've been trying to keep writing, because it's hard to start again, once you stop. Also, I had an idea for a long (for me) fic. I currently have 4500 first draft words, some ideas for the next few scenes and only a vague idea of how it's going to end. I am enjoying writing it, so I almost don't care if I actually finish it.

I watched Strictly at the weekend. Well, judging by how long it took me to get through the episode, I actually watched less than a third of it. I can't watch all the celebrities, the same way you get to know the comedians on Taskmaster. But I'm permanently behind on TV and can't watch that much dancing without getting dizzy and/or bored. So I just watched Susan Calman, Richard Coles and Jonnie Peacock.

I found the part where they were drawing out who their partner was quite dull, because the only Pro dancer on there I've heard of is Anton Du Bec. I liked Richard Coles introducing himself because he was hilarious. Does not take himself seriously in the slightest, which I loved. I didn't intend to watch him at all, but him and Susan have been hilarious on Twitter.

I watched the Footloose dance and it ruined my night by making me dizzy. I didn't remember it being that bad, when I tried watching a dance a few years ago. I tried the dance again in the morning on my iPod and I was fine... but I looked away when they spun the camera round. I'd got complacent and forgotten I needed to do that. In future I will watch the dances on my iPod and then skip through the rest of the episode on my PVR.

But of the dance itself, I liked Richard Coles. He looked like he was enjoying himself really hamming it up. And Susan looked like she was just having a really good time. So I am really looking forward to seeing them dance.

On YouTube I found that Claudia Fragapane had been on it. Which I knew at the time and had forgotten. So I watched some of her dances. They did really use her flexibility and she did lots of lifts, because of course she has the balance* to do it. Her dancing generally was pretty good, which is what you'd expect from a gymnast. And yet I preferred Judy Murray's dancing - she might not have done much, but the dances were more fun.

The last one I watched was to Shut Up and Dance - which was the first song I did at Rock Choir. It was a great, fun song and we all loved it. We'd sing it in the breaks. At the end of term we sang through all the songs we'd done that term, and started and ended with that song.

*One of my ballet teachers once told us that lifts weren't about strength they were about balance, and as long as you have that anyone can lift anyone else.

I thought this week I'd get more done than I have. Especially as more things start back after summer next week and I won't be as quiet again until half term. And then it was just a ridiculous week at work. On paper it wasn't busy, but there was just shit going down all over the place and I spent the week cleaning it up. I got to the point on Friday where I couldn't see properly looking at the screen.

Today, though, was a day off, so I cleaned the house, watched people running about in Newcastle and am watching live scores at the US Open (I'm interested in Jamie Murray and Martina Hingis winning the mixed doubles, and Alfie Hewett vs Gordon Reid, but the BBC and Eurosport aren't).

Tomorrow there are more people running about in Newcastle, followed by some more work. I was thinking this would be a quiet weekend, with the US Open finals being on so late, so I'd watch the latest series of Game of Thrones. But it turns out there was other sport, so it will have to wait.

I did, though, think about my Yuletide nominations. I had a not-very short list of 11 fandoms. I narrowed it down by thinking about what I really wanted for them and ended up with The Last Leg, Taskmaster and 40-Love. The latter was at the bottom of the short list because I got it last year but a) you can't have too much of a good thing and b) the US Open is currently on, so I'm feeling all tennisy.

SJA was just pipped at the post when I realised I'm mostly interested in Gita, thanks to Mina Anwar at the SJA Reunion. Which isn't a bad thing, but I went for fandoms where I'd be happy to write any of the characters. Everything else was mostly just there on a whim. And a couple of them where Twitter things that I found I only liked in small doses. 1000 words is a lot more than 140...

This month I am going to be trying morris dancing. watervole found me a few local sides ages ago and the one I chose I remembered seeing at the local folk festival last year. I like that they have clogs. They handily meets on a day when I used to have choir, but don't any more. Although that's also the night after ballet, so the state of my legs will influence when in the month I get there - the first couple of weeks of term are always the worst as your legs get used to being in positions they haven't been in since the previous term.

I have now found out what it's all about, which is one of the reasons I wanted to try it. It's about flexibility and stretching and relaxing. I have never been flexible and am perfectly happy with that so doing things to improve my flexibility doesn't interest me. Stretching I get, but since I'm used to the idea that you do it before or after something else, getting to the end of yoga made me feel like I was ready to do some exercise, but I'd just done it (sort of).

I don't find it relaxing. At all. In fact I find it the opposite. It's partly because there was so little going on - yes, there was a voice and music and something to look at and something to do, but none of it was that interesting. The other reason was when Adrienne waiting until we were in a pose and then telling me to pay attention to my body. The bits that hurt, hurt more when you think about it, so that's really not helpful. And one of them (I forget which) telling me to move a limb into a pose 'mindfully' which is the most meaningless phrase I've ever heard in my life.

But the biggest problem I had with it is that it made me dizzy. And it's hard to explain, but it's not a normal sort of dizzy either. It's dizziness with a side of that horrible feeling you get in your head when a plane you're on takes off. And it lasts all evening (I only ever tried yoga in the evenings). I thought I'd be ok because although some of it involved putting my head upside down, I'd done that at ballet - in fact I'd done that exact stretch at ballet. But I found it wasn't just putting my head upside down, it was putting it horizontally as well. Which I never really do in real life.

I ended up just doing poses that involved standing up. Which was better for my head, but they were a combination of ballet but with a whole foot on floor, and fencing. Literally a lunge in yoga is a fencing lunge. And there is some actual ballet in there - what was apparently a goddess pose is actually a plie in second position.

I did discover, through a conversation about yoga with selenay that I'm really good at balancing. Which is interesting, given that I have a problem with my balance. It shows how useful ballet has been with that - I've had so much practise at balancing on tiptoes that having one whole foot on the floor is easy in comparison.

I'm going to give this 2/10, because it satisfied my curiosity, but it's just dull.

What I Just Finished ReadingKnowing the Score: My Family and Our Tennis Story by Judy Murray. Which is all selenay's fault. We were in Foyles, she was looking at cookbooks, the sports section was next to the cookery section, I started reading this book and then decided I couldn't wait for it to come out in paperback. I then read it in a day. It's partly what made me watch her Strictly dances, given that she has a chapter on it. It was really interesting to read how she (and then Jamie & Andy) got into tennis. And how much time and money their training took.

I was really interested to read about the gender divide in tennis. Things are starting to improve, but there are very few female coaches and girl players aren't taken as seriously as boy players. No male players were coached by women, and not many female players were either. I thought nothing of Andy taking on Amelie Mauresmo as his coach, but the reaction in the sport was really awful. A lot of people thought that a woman couldn't coach a man, even though it's the same sport. It was eye-opening.

What got me reading was the first chapter when she talked about Wimbledon when she was a girl. Her parents had it on all the time, the channel only got changed when play had finished, her dad was always home from work on time to watch it, and no food was cooked. Sounds just right to me!

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I saw this in Foyles, was intrigued by the title and selenay said it was good, so I got it from the library. And then I spent the long weekend reading it. I really enjoyed it. The author said at the end that she'd read a lot of Harry Potter fanfic and it showed. What amuses me is that during the book the main character is writing a fanfic called "Carry On, Simon", generally abbreviated to "Carry On." So then Rainbow Rowell has written Carry On - it's an actual book. Which I will get round to reading at some point, but before then there are some other books by her that are in my library (rather than the county).

What I'm Currently ReadingThe Wave by Morton Rhue. I've been wanting to re-read this for a while, but hadn't got round to looking up the author until I spotted it on a shelf in Foyles or Waterstones. We read it in secondary school - the only book I can remember reading that wasn't a book we were doing for English Lit. My memory of it is that it's about understanding how the Nazis sucked people in and got them to do horrible things. Although my main memory of it is that we had to write another chapter at the end (although I remember thinking it ended at a good point). It was one of only two things I did that my English teacher liked (the other was a ballad we had to write - I wrote it about tennis).

Enigma Tales by Una McCormack. Technically I'm currently reading it, although I only got a few pages in before being distracted by Judy Murray and library books.

What I'm Reading Next
I finally made it to the top of the reserve list for the library ebook of The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It's just annoying that I have to turn my old, slow Windows computer on to download it. And given that I couldn't watch the TV series too late in the evening, I won't even try reading this before bed.

Cheer Up Love by Susan Calman. Because she mentioned it on Twitter and now I have the paperback on reserve from the library (I don't like hardbacks: too big and heavy and hard to read in bed).

I've been meaning to post all week and keep getting distracted by other things. Sadly not sport (mostly). Although the US Open tennis starts this afternoon.

I had a busy week and a half - I pretty much did all my summer socialising in that time. Most of it was Rock Choir, who did some summer workshops. It was fun to be doing some singing when usually everything stops for the summer. There were a lot fewer people than during term time, but it didn't feel like it when we were singing. I wondered why until the ceiling was pointed out. The room we rehearse in has really good acoustics. I will miss that about Rock Choir - the hall my other choir rehearses in is terrible for sound.

I discovered I'll be watching (some of) Strictly this year. I meant to watch when Judy Murray was on, but never quite got round to it. People have told me I'd like the dances, but the camera constantly moving around is so distracting that I can't concentrate on the dancing. And it makes me dizzy. But then I found all of Judy Murray's dances on YouTube and watched them on my iPod and using such a small screen was such an improvement. (I really should try watching Class on there) I did enjoy the dances - I like how they got tennis in it and other stories. I don't know why people thought she was terrible because they seemed fine to me - although I don't have anything to compare it with.

Although I will this autumn. Susan Calman announced on Twitter she was on it. It sounds like she'll be a laugh. And Jonnie Peacock is on as well. And what with them on Twitter (mostly Susan Calman) I've ended up following Rev Richard Coles (after a brief moment of wondering if it's wrong to follow a vicar on Twitter if you're not Christan). Although he tweets quite a lot and I started following him at the same time as the US Open draw and Andy Murray withdrawal and that end of TweetDeck got a bit crazy.

What I've seen most of, Strictly-wise, is the back stage stuff. When I was lodging my landlady would be watching It Takes Two while I was cooking dinner and watching rehearsals was much more interesting than watching the final dances. I will probably tell my PVR to tape it all and then sift through it sometime.

Otherwise I have been getting some jobs done. I now have new curtains in all the rooms (blinds for the kitchen and bathroom are next). Although in order to get something I liked for the lounge and would keep the heat in in the winter and heat out in the summer, I ended up with black out curtains. Since the lounge is south facing and it is hot and sunny out today I'm therefore sitting in quite a dark room. Although it is getting lighter, the closer the sun gets to shining directly at it.

After owning my new computer for three and a half months I finally got tired of turning the old one on to print and decided to install it on my new one. And then I discovered it doesn't work on Linux Mint over 17. And possibly doesn't work on Windows 10 either. It is an old printer. So now I have a new one. At least they're cheap. Of course installing it and getting all the functions working wasn't easy, but it wouldn't be Linux if it all worked out of the box (and who wants something that just works and doesn't let you tinker with it - where would the fun be in that?).

A couple of weekends ago I went to the SJA Reunion one-day convention in Cardiff. I wasn't too sure about it, I had a bit of "who are these people, how do I know they know what they're doing" as if I know everyone in the world. But Katy Manning (Jo) was going to be there and I've never met her, so I went. If I'd been the sort of person who'd go up to her on the street (or train station platform) I'd have met her at Cardiff station where we were waiting for the train to the tiny little station that was just round the corner from the con. But I wasn't, so I didn't. But since I'd already planned to be a bit late (given that I got up at 6am!) and the train was late, I felt better knowing that at least I wouldn't be later than one of the guests. Incidentally, I ended up getting the same train back as John Leeson.

This month I'm going to be trying yoga. It's something I've seen cropping up all over the place (or at any rate, being mentioned by all sorts of people). So I was interested to see what it's like. just_ann_now has given me links to videos so I can try it out at home.

This month I've been using Duolingo, Memrise and Lingvist to re-learn French.

I'm level 9 in Memrise French 1. I'm level 5 in Lingvist, where I know 418 words. Between the three of them those are the only useful stats I can find.

Duolingo is probably the one people know best, on the basis that I've seen various people talk about it and not the others. It gamifies the whole thing, which some people love and I can't stand. This is partly because it's been a big thing at work for ages and partly because I perversely want to not do what it wants me to. So it'll get all excited that I have a 6 day streak, I'll purposely break it. And I really dislike that if you get too many things wrong you can't do any more.

I dislike that it has so many screens and button presses in comparison to the others. When you've got an answer right the other two carry on to the next one, this one requires you to press to say that you want to carry on. Although it also doesn't let you go back. It does tell you in advance what you're going to learn and allow you to test out of it.

When I started it it would teach me some words, then do some things to help me learn them. Then it would teach me some words and test me on some others. Now it just goes straight to the testing. Which just seems bizarre to me.

I also take exception to it giving me a picture of a pair of trousers and telling me the French for trousers is pantalons, which I already knew, and then telling me that an alternative translation is pants. Er, no it's not. And one I had today where the English translation was "Letters, which ones" and I got it wrong because I translated it into proper English.

It also has a thing where you can speak the answer on certain screens. Which is fine an good, and as it says you need to learn to speak French. However, there are two problems with this:
1. It's asking me to speak English
2. It doesn't understand what I say in English

Memrise is the one I hated at the start. It was teaching me really basic stuff I already knew (like please and thank you) and I couldn't understand how it was all structured. I still find the structure a bit unintuitive, but I like that each session it starts with a review of the previous one before introducing new words. And I like that it has different ways of reminding me of the new words before I'm asked to type them.

The biggest problem with it is that I find some of it simple and then keep getting it wrong because I don't read it all carefully enough. So tonight, for example, it was teaching me fish (poisson) which I already knew, but it thinks I don't know it at all because I kept selecting poison as the French for fish.

So far it has just been words, not sentences (I'm sorry is the closest it's come). It's possible it's coming - I did start with French 1 after all, but I do feel a bit like I'm not learning anything useful.

Lingvist is the most restricted, but it acknowledges that it's only there to teach words and that it only has a few (European) languages. But I love the stats it gives you. It tells you how many screens you've done that session, how many you got right, how many new words you learnt. For every word you've seen it tells you how many times you saw it. When you learn a verb it gives you the verb tables.

It's much better than the other two at learning what I knew. If I keep getting something wrong it will show it to me more often, if I get it right, then it doesn't bother.

None of them are ever going to be as good as learning in a classroom with a teacher. In my first year of learning French, when I was 11, I knew a lot of parts of the body because we used to play Simon Says. Although after that year parts of the body never really came up and I forgot most of them.

I don't really know if I'm getting anywhere with any of them, but I have only been doing it for a month, which comes to about 9 hours in total (3 in each app). Which is nothing really, considering I last did French over 15 years ago.

Having said that, I have enjoyed it, in varying amounts and I will carry on, although not necessarily with all three apps. So I'm going to give it 7/10 for the experience.

It took me a little while to get used to the change from athletics from swimming, but now I'm loving the swimming. I still record it, partly because it starts before I finish work, but also because I'm not that interested in all the chat. Mostly I just like the swimming. And they repeat bits that they showed earlier/the previous day and I don't need to see it that many times. It's just a shame there's only two days of it left. Then I have to get used to athletics again, at the end of next week.

I had forgotten the Winter Olympics and the Commonwealth Games are both next year. Annoyingly, both on the other side of the world, although it does at least give me the evenings to catch up on the curling and other sports. The Winter Olympics is in February, Paralympics in March and Commonwealth Games in April. And then in May the tennis on TV season starts and before I know it it'll be summer and I won't have had time to watch any non-sports on TV for months.

It did occur to me that this year I haven't been to any live sports whatsoever. I haven't even been to the theatre or to see comedians. I thought about going to the last Saturday of Wimbledon, but the weather was crap. So that was probably a good decision, although there were spaces on court 3, where the wheelchair men's doubles was played. I thought about going to the Para-athletics last Saturday, but the weather forecast was for rain and I've done sitting watching sport in the rain and cold before and it's not fun. And as it happened I had to clean the house anyway. But London is bidding to have the World Para-athletics championships back in two years, so I can go then. And the Commonwealth Games is bound to come back to this country sooner or later.

I did manage to squeeze some fic writing in. After a Twitter conversation about ships with the Thirteenth Doctor, I wrote a Thirteen/Missy (very short) fic:The Love of an Enemy (334 words) by paranoidangelDoctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Missy
Summary: Missy needs a friend. Spoilers for The Doctor Falls.

And last week's Last Leg made me want to write more Josh/Jonnie, so I did:Bromance, Showmance (594 words) by paranoidangel
Fandom: The Last Leg RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Josh Widdicombe/Jonnie Peacock
Summary: Jonnie confronts Josh about his bromances.

This is going to be one of my Yuletide fandoms this year (again). But when I posted this the Josh/Jonnie relationship tag didn't come up. So I found one of my Yuletide fics and discovered that's because there were only three fics with that relationship and I wrote all of them for Yuletide last year.

What I Just Finished ReadingMillions Like Us: Women's Lives During the Second World War by Virginia Nicholson. Finally! I kept reading it on and off so it's taken me ages to get through it. It's quite long and it's hard going reading about the awful things some of these women dealt with.

Even after the war things were quite hard. Some women were happy to go back to being housewives... except that rationing got worse and they spent their time queueing for food when there wasn't enough for everyone in the queue. Other women had opportunities opened to them, but then got married and had a baby and then found they were trapped in their lives as mothers. Two of them used to spent their days drinking whisky round one of them's houses while their children played!

What I'm Currently ReadingThe Mill Girls by Tracy Johnson. I found this in The Works for £2 and decided to read it next on the basis that it was short. It's a collection of four stories of women who worked in the cotton mills in Lancashire. I've read three of them so far and although they're quite similar in that their families were poor and the women went out to work at 14, they have different attitudes to the mills. Although it's interesting that what they had in common is that when they enjoyed it, it was because they were working with other women their age that they had things in common with.

What I'm Reading Next
I don't know. It depends on what I fancy reading after I finish this book.

I've been very watching sport. And some other things, but mostly the sport. Wimbledon fortnight is like Christmas to tennis fans. Only better than Christmas because it lasts two weeks and the shops aren't closed.

Jo Konta was great. What gets me is less how good she is and more how calm she has become. 5 Live played a clip of her and Clare Balding where they were talking about her muffin making like it's tennis. Which was funny. I correctly predicted the men's single's finalists and therefore beat my sister at Fantasy Wimbledon.

Although the men's and ladies singles finals were more one-sided than expected, the doubles were good, as were the wheelchair doubles. Due to rain the men's wheelchair doubles were on at the same time as the ladies singles. So I had the singles on the TV with no sound, 5 Live on the radio, who were covering the singles and were two shots ahead of the TV, and had the wheelchair doubles on the computer with the sound turned down low.

And then Wimbledon was over. It was so hard going to work on Monday without being able to listen to the 5 Live commentary team chat about tennis while I work. The Para-Athletics World Championships helped, though. I have been enjoying that, although I record it all and start it late because athletics involves a lot of chat and a lot of re-running races, not to mention the adverts, and I can get three hours of it into one hour.

Today is the last day of it, but that's ok because the World Swimming Championships starts today. In fact it just started 15 minutes ago, but I am also recording that. After that there's a whole three days with no sport on (that I'm interested in) before the World Athletics Championships start. And I thought this summer would be quiet without the Olympics and Paralympics...

In other, non-sporting news, I got a new sofa last week! It's blue, making it the most colourful thing in my mainly brown/magnolia lounge. It's too tall for Missy to get at, but she thinks there is a way in, she just has to find it. Which means that every evening she climbs up me to get on it, runs about, digs a bit, chews a bit* and eventually slides off it without realising how high up she is, so I have to catch her.
*Yeah, it's not going to look new for long with Missy about

I also got new windows this week. The old ones had gaps between the window and the frame, so the new ones should keep the house warmer in the winter. But the old ones were wooden and it was windy and as a result there was wood dust everywhere. I had to clean the toilet before I could go the toilet. So I've spent most of this weekend cleaning. What with all the wood dust about I've had to hoover everything and wash everything. I ache, my knee hurts and I'm looking forward to going back to work for the rest. But it is so good to have everything so much cleaner than usual.

For the past nearly-two weeks my life has been all about the tennis. And I could write loads about it here, but I won't, because I have a couple of other things to write about, and because most people probably don't want to know quite that much detail. But I am writing this while watching the wheelchair men's doubles final.

I've Never Seen Star Wars
Last week I worked out what I was doing for July, since I could fit it around the tennis, I just hadn't got around to posting it, for tennis reasons. I am re-learning French, using Duolingo and other apps. I did five years of it at school and I was generally not that great, I was in the bottom set (of two) for GCSE and then somehow I came out with an A and wanted to do more of it. So I did French for Scientists at uni, which was two hours a week for 25 weeks.

I know an awful lot of people use/have used Duolingo, but I also have Memrise and Lingvist on my iPod, that have been sitting there doing nothing. So I am using all three and at the end of the month I will report back.

Not Prime Time
I'm glad I didn't sign up for this, as it went live earlier this week and authors have been revealed and I haven't fitted in reading any of it in between. But I did write for it:Leading Lady (1621 words) by paranoidangel
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Beverly Crusher/William Riker
Characters: Beverly Crusher, William Riker, Deanna Troi
Additional Tags: Acting, Theatre, Kissing
Summary: Beverly is having regrets about playing the leading role opposite Will.

When browsing through the requests I came across the Riker/Crusher one and I didn't care much for it. But I read the prompt because I was curious and resistate made a great case for them deserving friends with benefits. So much so that I really wanted to write it. I was going to write it for a treat, but wasn't sure how to make me do it - but then it came up as a pinch hit right after assignments going out and I snapped it up. I really enjoyed writing these two so much that I want to write them again (along with all the other things I want to write, and Unconventional Courtship that I need to write after Wimbledon and the Para-athletics are over).

(I haven't posted a Never Seen Star Wars post for July yet because everything stops for Wimbledon. I'll post one in a fortnight.)

I wrote some fic! I started a Librarians fic a while ago because I realised that I wanted to write more Flynn and Cassandra friendship. And because I have post-ep fics for two other season 3 episodes, I clearly needed another one. And then last night's Doctor Who prompted me to write a fic related to it.

There are spoilers for The Librarians 308 And the Eternal Question, and last night's Doctor who below.

I seem to always have more Big Finish audios to listen to than I have time to listen. I tend to listen to them on the way to work and since my journey is 20 minutes long it takes three or four days to get through one CD.

They've just done three CDs that are two one hour stories, rather one two hour story. Which, annoyingly, they're not planning to do often because people prefer the longer stories. I prefer the shorter because I can get one story listened to in one week. And I don't have to remember back so far as to what's happening. And it just zips along faster. I liked these.

The one I've just finished is Shadow Planet/World Apart, which is a Seven, Ace and Hex. As part of me going through my stuff and working out what to get rid of, I looked at my Big Finish CDs and thought, given that I've always got some to listen to, and a backlog of podcasts (which I listen to while cooking), am I ever going to listen to these again? I haven't answered that question, but listening to the latest audio made me realise how much I missed the Seven, Ace and Hex stuff and I want to re-listen to it.

And then there was the latest Short Trip, How to Win Planets and Influence People. I'd been looking forward to it for ages because it's Four, Sarah and Harry (finally!). And I'm sure it was originally due to come out much sooner. And then I was disappointed because Sarah and Harry barely feature in it, although they are important in the scenes they're in. But, despite that disappointment, I really enjoyed it. Rufus Hound was better than I expected as the Monk, mainly because I liked Graeme Garden better (mainly because it's Graeme Garden). The way it was done was good and I liked the story.

This month I listened to Ed Sheeran's album, Divide. In fact, I listened to it last week when it was too hot to do anything else.

I liked that it had different styles on it. I was put off by the first one being rap, because I don't like rap - I like music to have a tune. But then there were two rap songs, there were a couple of slower ones, and generally a variety. Which was unexpected - a lot of artists have songs that all sound the same.

Otherwise, though, it was nothing special. I knew one of the songs and quite liked that. But there was nothing exciting in it - nothing that really grabbed me as having particularly interesting lyrics or a really nice tune. It was just blah and non-offensive.

I suppose being middle-of-the-road is why he's popular. But otherwise I wouldn't mind either way if I listened to him again or didn't. It's like most of the music I listen to on the radio - it's not something I love or something I hate, it's just there and it's all right, but nothing special.

It's been hot the past few days, so if I hadn't needed to do anything during that time, I didn't do it. If I was in, I just read or caught up on TV and was hot. As was Missy - hamsters don't do well if it's too hot and they don't like the humidity either. But she's enjoyed frozen peas and frozen carrots and she's been outside. Because it's been so hot I've had the back door open while she's out playing, so of course she went out onto the doorstep and then fell off. After a few times falling off she was happy about where she was and tried to wander off. At one point she found a pebble and decided she wanted it.

Monday I had one of my (on average) two days a year when I wished my car had air conditioning. I did some stargazing from my back door, where I was sat because it was cooler and I could keep an eye on Missy escaping. Not that I could see many stars because even by the time I went to bed late it still wasn't properly dark.

Now, though, the weather is much better, I have a couple of days off work and I am catching up on things.

Tennis is crazy. Queens sometimes has those years when all the seeds go out in the first couple of rounds, so we were probably overdue one. But I feel like the third, second and first seeds all going out one after the other must be some sort of record. And a whole load withdrew due to injuries. But it'll be interesting to get a winner outside of the usual suspects - although a few former champions are still in the draw.

Unconventional Courtship is on again. I spent some time at the weekend with the Generator and ended up signing up with this summary:310) Night of the Living Wed by Michele Hauf
Dayna Mellanby and Del Tarrant's evening turns deadly when some uninvited guests show up at their friend's party — a horde of hungry zombies. The couple is in a fight for their lives when a new, heroic side of Tarrant emerges, and he vows to protect Dayna no matter the cost….
Obviously explosions will follow. I will probably change the zombies, but I went with this one because it was just so perfect for them. And will be different to what I've written for it before.